


day or night (we don't have to say a word)

by banelands



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Pre-Relationship, season finale au, shout out to avalance for having me in a chokehold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 01:30:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13753401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banelands/pseuds/banelands
Summary: My take on what might happen in the LoT Season 3 Finale. Or, basically, the scenes I would LIKE to watch rip my heart out during the LoT finale.





	day or night (we don't have to say a word)

**Author's Note:**

> hey, so this is a short little thing I couldn't get out of my head. it's un-betaed so any mistakes are my own, but i hope you enjoy! (Title's from The Cab's 'Intoxicated' because I'm having an emo renaissance).

The fight against Mallus was never going to be easy. Sara had bit her lip and brushed her fingers under Ava’s chin before they had left the Waverider, with something like an apology in her steady, silent gaze. And then it had all gone to shit.

When the dust settles, there is a ring of ash in the center of the battlefield. Ava knows it’s there, she watched the explosion of blue energy arc out from that very spot, and when she looks at the center of that circle and sees Sara lying there completely still, it takes all she has not to collapse into the dirt.

The steadily bleeding gash in her side screams as she staggers to her feet. With stumbling steps, she lurches toward Sara, numb to the sounds of Gary’s panicked hiccups and Nate’s shouting. As her feet cross the line of ash, another body crashes into her.

“Let me go first, love.” It’s the warlock, Constantine. He looks haggard and the playful lilt of his voice has utterly disappeared.

“Get out of my way.” Ava shoves her shoulder into him and tries to ignore the fresh jolt of pain it brings. He must be too tired to cast some sort of spell on her, because he stumbles back, giving her the opportunity to cross the final few feet and drop to her knees in front of Sara.

“I’m serious!” Constantine’s shouts, distress cutting through his voice. “Don’t—!”

Ava’s hands drop to Sara’s arm and a roar rips from the other woman’s body like a crash of thunder. Her eyes flash open, glazed over in deep blue. She writhes in the dirt, thrashing and snarling.

“Sara!” Ava’s arms are weak from the fight and she struggles to hold her down. Constantine falls to ground beside her and starts mumbling slurred incantations, waving his bloodied and bruised hands over the length of Sara’s body.

“Laurel, Laurel, please…” Sara gasps, convulsing. “If you…need someone to blame, blame me.”

“What’s happening to her?” Ava snaps. She can sense the others approaching behind her and feels a flame of irrational fear across the back of her neck. “Constantine?”

“…ghosts,” Tears began to leak from Sara’s eyes. “We died on that island. Ollie, we…”

Constantine sucks in a breath, “It’s Mallus, or what’s left of him. He’s using the last of his energy to burn through Sara’s timeline. He’s trying to kill her.”

Sara’s body twists, a strangle sob of “Nyssa” tearing from her throat. Guilt spikes through Ava when she feels herself flinch at the name—or, not really the name, but the rawness with which Sara said it. It was how she’d wanted to hear her own name said by those same lips, selfishly, oh so selfishly. Maybe in a daydream, far away from this field of blood and ash.

“Laurel….I— _NO! LEAVE ME THERE!_ ” Sara’s muscles strain and her eyes bulge, the blue flickering with furious red. Constantine swears and launches back into a waterfall of Latin, his words jumbling together like a broken record.

“Help her!” She hisses at him. There are dozens of Time Bureau agents in the earshot of them, but it doesn’t matter, not when Sara is lying in the rubble like this with the white of her suit streaked with blood and dirt. Wetness burns Ava’s eyes as she fights the constant thrash of Sara’s body. Distantly, she notices that Amaya has dropped to her knees beside them with a hand on her amulet, looking lost.

“ _WHY? WHY DID YOU BRING ME BACK?!”_ Sara’s screams turn animalistic as the tendons in her neck tense with effort. Amaya makes a pained sound and leans her face closer to Sara’s gnashing teeth, tears dripping from the end of her nose and into the dust. Ava grits her teeth.

“ _I cast you out, Mallus!_ ” Constantine snarls. “ _Leave this vessel! Ut abire ex regno protinus!”_

Sara body arches up, like all the air was being sucked out of her. From her mouth, a tiny wisp of blue energy floats out, curling like smoke through the air. Constantine’s hand shoots out and, with another flurry of incantation, he drives the energy into the ground, sending up a spray of embers. They all watch as it scorches its way down to a place where Ava can only assume it belongs, where it would die out in an inferno. That was the only place the remnants of Mallus could go—otherwise she would hunt it down and force it to feel the deep, dark well of hatred poisoning her every cell.

Constantine sags forward and is caught by Ray, his head lolling with exhaustion. “S’done,” he mumbles. “S’gone.”

Sara is completely still on the ground. Ava’s hands have gone cold around her wrists. She feels a heavy hand push her roughly and turns ready to slit the throat of its owner when she sees that it’s Mick, his face uncharacteristically shell-shocked.

“Need to get her to Gideon,” he grunts, leaning past Ava to scoop Sara effortlessly into his arms. Once he has her secure, he turns quickly, all but running up the hill that separates them from the Waverider. Ava watches him disappear over the rise followed closely by Nate and Zari. She closes her eyes. When they open again, Amaya has a hand on her shoulder and grief in her gentle eyes.

Ava hangs her head and tries to drag the will to lead the packs of Time Bureau agents waiting on her, but all she can gather is an overwhelming need to be on the Waverider. There are people who need her on this battlefield and if she ever sees Rip Hunter again, she is going to drive her bare hand through his chest and ask him if he enjoys the feeling. But she can’t do that right now.

“Gary,” she calls across the field, despising the way her voice cracks. “Get up, we need status reports.”

“Ava…” Amaya says.

“Go look out for her.” Ava shakes her head, choking down the urge to let her own tears fall. “I have to do my job.”

Amaya drops her hand and nods, twisting her lip under her teeth. Between the two of them, she and Ray start dragging Constantine up the hill. Ava lets them go, jaw clenching as she denies herself the surge of weakness that wants to watch them go. Instead, she stands and scans the area, counting her people.

_It’s finally done_ , she tells herself. It just didn’t feel as triumphant as she had thought it would.

           

* * *

 

Constantine calls her from the Waverider in the hours after, heavy bags under his eyes.

“Well, she’s alive,” he says, dragging a hand over his stubbly face. “I’ve ensured that there are no signs of demonic energy anywhere in her.”

“Is there any lasting damage?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“How?” Ava asks. It’s well past nightfall at the Time Bureau and nearly everyone had either gone home or been admitted to medical for overnight treatment. Rip had yet to show his face to her, but that was probably for the best.

“Look, love,” Constantine says. “I’ve seen Sara Lance’s demons with my own eyes. If anyone can survive an attack like that, it’s her.”

“I know,” Ava breathes. She runs her fingers over the edge of her desk, trying to erase the sounds of Sara screaming from her memory. “I know. Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, love.” His roguish smirk flashes briefly, before shifting into something more genuine. “Just keep an eye on her, yeah? I’ve dragged her back from Hell once and I’ve got no desire to do it again.”

Ava nods to him, wondering if he could sense all the things she was too afraid to say.

           

* * *

 

Three days. Three days of hourly updates from Gideon on Sara’s condition while she sat chained to her desk, staring at the text of incident reports she was supposed to have signed. Director Bennett had granted everyone involved in the fight paid leave and medical treatment, but Ava had been the only one to decline. She had nothing to do at home except to wait and she could wait in the Time Bureau just as well as she could in the oppressive quiet of her apartment.

The ping of her monitor rouses her from her fourteenth time reading the words ‘Captain Lance’ in Gary’s report. Zari’s face flashes onto her screen and Ava’s breath catches in her throat.

“She’s awake.”

It takes two seconds for Ava to materialize on the Waverider. She ignores Nate’s surprised greeting and strides straight to the medbay.

Sara’s there, laid up under Gideon’s watchful scanners. She doesn’t look healthy, but she doesn’t look dead either, so that’s about as much as any of them could ask for. Mick rises from Sara’s side and gives Ava a once-over.

A gruff “Sharpe” is the only thing he offers her before making his way out of the medbay and closing the door behind him.

Sara isn’t made of glass, Ava knows that. After seeing just a glimpse of the lifetime of pain she had endured, that fact is more than apparent and painful in way Ava had never known such knowledge could be. Ava had studied every inch of Sara Lance’s life, but she had never really considered what it must have felt like to live through such chaos—to be dragged back from death, to have all your demons pull you from your grave. To lose her sister. Looking at Sara now, it all but tore Ava’s heart out.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Sara gave a raspy chuckle. “I’m alive and well.”

“You don’t look ‘well’.”

“But I’m fine,” Sara’s forehead crinkled. “Why are you standing over there?”

Ava shies back towards the medbay door. The distance was necessary, because if she got close….well, it already felt like she was walking on thin, creaking ice.

“Ava,” Sara’s eyes, clear of the influence of Mallus, flick over her. The bruise that colors her right cheekbone has settled into a deep purple.

 “I’m glad you’re okay, Miss Lance,” Ava says, fingers flickering over her time courier. “I’m—I’m really glad.”

“Don’t ‘Miss Lance’ me. I’m the one who almost died, if anyone gets to withdraw emotionally, it’s me.” There’s no heat behind Sara’s words. She even lets out a sad little laugh, saying, “Mallus tore into my life like an open wound. But I’ve already lived through all that pain. I’ve already felt everything he forced me to feel again.”

 “I’m sorry,” Ava whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s the past.”

There is silence for long moment where they take each other in—the resounding echoes of Ava’s fear versus the ancient-seeming weight of Sara Lance’s bloody history. Sara had to be made of something truly divine to have withstood so much and still keep fighting. An angel, maybe. The angel of death.

“God,” Ava sighs, tears welling up for the first time since the battlefield. She holds out a hand in the space between them. “Can I…?”

All it takes is a nod from Sara and Ava is across the room. Sara sits up just in time to catch her, fingers clawing at Ava’s back in an effort to drag her closer. Ava’s right hand goes to back of Sara’s neck and the other cards through her knotted, golden hair. She presses in, brushing her lips over the bruise on Sara’s cheek.

A tremor runs through Sara’s body. She’s not exactly crying, but the way her nails dig through the material of Ava’s blazer is telling enough. With her own cheeks getting damper by the second, Ava extends her trail of kisses from the cheek bruise down to Sara’s jawline and then into the crook of her neck. She pauses over Sara’s pulse point, feeling the ragged beat of it down to her toes and nearly whimpers at the warmth of her skin, pulling her hands from Sara’s hair so that they could splay across her ribs and feel the thrum of her body.

“Sara Lance,” Ava says against her throat, delighting in the shiver that she receives in return. “I hereby ban you from engaging in single combat with any demonic time entities from now on or you will be subject to detainment by the Time Bureau indefinitely.”

“I love it when you talk Agent to me,” Sara sniffles. Ava hums into her skin, basking in the simple fact that the most aggravating person she had ever met was still alive.

“I’m serious,” she says. “Don’t _ever_ try to 1v1 a hellspawn again.”

“Well, if that’s what it takes to get you to kiss me…” Sara says, causing Ava to pull back and really look at her, from the brightness of her eyes, the scattering of freckles across her cheeks, and the small, newly-forming laugh lines at the corners of her mouth.

“God, you’re so—“

“Reckless? Irresponsible?” Sara fills in, tilting her head ever so slightly.

“No,” Ava glances down at her. “Beautiful. I was going to say beautiful.”

“Bullshit,” Sara laughs before grabbing the back of Ava’s neck and crashing their mouths together in a kiss. All at once, the fear and anger that had been weighing Ava down for days bleeds from her body, leaving only the heady sensation of kissing Sara Lance’s split, chapped lips. Sara kisses her softly, stroking the very tips of her fingers down Ava’s jaw and it’s a wonder that she could be so gentle with so much darkness biting at her heels.

Ava groans into the kiss and tightens her grip on Sara’s sides. This, right here, was heaven. Sara’s tongue running over the edge of her lip was the closest thing to complete cardiac arrest Ava had ever come to. All she knew was that she wanted more, more of everything. She wanted to live every single day with the feeling of Sara’s breathing under her palms and her warm breath puffing across her mouth.

“I’m okay,” Sara mumbles between breaths. She grabs one of Ava’s hands and plants it over her heart. “I’m right here.”

“You’re okay,” Ava’s fingers curl over Sara’s chest as she presses a hard kiss into her lips. Sara squeezes that hand tight, like she doesn’t plan on letting go. And, God, Ava really, really hopes she doesn’t.

           

           

**Author's Note:**

> i usually stick to shorter stuff, but would anyone be interested in a multi-chapter avalance au fic? also, shouts to @john-constantines-spells on tumblr for that little bit of a spell i used in the beginnning. thanks for reading!


End file.
